"Rough wind that moanest loud
Grief too sad for song;
Wild wind when sullen cloud
Knells all the night long;
Sad storm whose tears are vain,
Bare woods whose branches stain.
Deep caves and dreary main,
Wail for the world's wrong!"
And wondrous in melody and restraint of expression is a verse like
this:--
"One word is too often profaned
For me to profane it;
One feeling too falsely disdained
For thee to disdain it;
One hope is too like despair
For prudence to smother;
And pity from thee more dear
Than that from another."
The words are few, and there is nothing remarkable in the rhythm, yet
there is not a line that could have come from any pen but Shelley's.
In these short poems we are clearly conscious of the poet's melancholy,
a melancholy which in his longer works is veiled, or else overpowered
by his belief in a bright future, his faith in the progress of the
human race. The inmost recesses of his own being were penetrated by a
sadness produced by the feeling of the mutability of everything, and
by early experience of the manner in which feeling leads astray, love
disappoints, and life deceives.